"Lake" by Becky Kennedy

Several turns down the road,

through switchgrass, the paths like so

many answers, you take the

trail to where the lake lies like

black milk. Ducks stitch the water,

moving where the water moves.

You say, start anywhere; just

talk. It’s big, bottomless, I

say. Twilight runs its hands on

the water’s face, long shadows

of clouds sewn on the water,

the spinning souls of leaves. Is

it bigger, you ask, than a

breadbox. It was a guessing

game you played with the children,

their cheeks bright with questions as

they called into the new night,

what’s a breadbox. You ask, is

it darker than a pocket.

Day quitting the water then,

taking out all that had been

left of the light after it

came to us, which is the grief

of being: the hunger that

wakes us. And then only the

weave of breathing between us,

closer, nearly, than the night.

Becky Kennedy is a linguist and a college professor who lives with her family in

Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in a number of journals; her

poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared on Verse Daily.